by Doug Farren
A moment later she said, “Dave, this is Anita Kingston. The Starfire research ship may be disabled and in danger. You can get its last known coordinates from the operations center. The main deep space radar is already performing a wide area scan. I want you to commence a detailed search starting from the Starfire’s last known position and working out as far as our instruments can see. I want everything we’ve got put into the search including radar, optical and radio resources. I want a wide-angle antenna trained toward that area immediately with a direct feed back to the Starfire project command center.”
She received an acknowledgment and replaced the phone on her belt. “We’ve done all we can do at the moment. Now let’s hope that luck is on our side.”
“I just hope they didn’t actually go FTL and slam into some rock at ten times light speed,” Kyle dejectedly remarked.
“We would have detected that,” CAIN, who had been listening, replied. “The amount of energy released as the result of such a collision would be astronomical. No such energy burst has been detected. Also, according to the theories developed by Jay, no such collision would be possible since the ship does not actually exist in normal space while under FTL drive. If a large enough object is encountered the gravitational distortion of the space-time continuum would disrupt the drive fields and force the ship back into normal space. It would be possible for a collision to occur at that time but the energies involved would be too small to detect.”
“You’re just full of good news,” Kyle quipped.
“I am merely stating the facts as they appear to me,” CAIN replied in a seemingly hurt tone. “I am worried about Jay and the rest of the Starfire crew. But, the odds are in favor of the ship surviving and I will continue to hope for that outcome until evidence against it is presented.”
“They will turn up,” Anita said getting up and heading for the door. “I have hopes that this will all turn out okay.”
A moment after the door had closed behind her, Kyle turned back to his console and said in a low voice, “It’s going to break your heart if he doesn’t come back.”
“She does seem to care for Jay quite a bit,” CAIN stated.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“I hear almost everything that is said within the company’s buildings.”
“I hope you know how to keep secrets.”
“There is no need for concern. I fully understand the need to protect the privacy of others. I merely stated what I had thought to be common knowledge.”
“I wouldn’t mention it to anyone else. Not everyone is as perceptive as you.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
12
Success—Sort of
An instant after the main drive field had formed, Kauffman’s vision blurred and a wave of disorientation and nausea hit him. The room seemed to be spinning and he thought he was going to be sick. He felt as if his insides were being pulled in all directions. The sensations lasted long enough for him to wonder if this was what death felt like and then, abruptly, they stopped.
Kauffman, stomach reeling and on the verge of losing its contents, looked at the event timer and saw that eight seconds had elapsed. The readings on his console seemed to indicate that the stardrive was operating and drawing power. It looked like a stable drive field had been established. But why was the drive drawing so much more power than expected? He didn't have much time to ponder the question.
The timer hit fifteen seconds and the sensations returned again then ended after only a couple of seconds. This time Kauffman could not control his tortured stomach and he barely had enough time to duck his head toward the floor before he vomited.
The wave of nausea quickly passed. When Kauffman brought his head back up he noticed he was not the only one to have gotten sick. The chief engineer and the helm had both expelled the contents of their own stomachs. The bridge quickly filled with the foul smell of vomit and small particles of the material were beginning to float around the room. The communications officer and the chief engineer both took action to begin vacuuming up the debris before it could get into the equipment.
Jay turned to look toward Captain Shoemaker. Although he looked a little green he had not gotten sick. “I certainly hope starflight is not going to be like that,” he quipped. “What happened?”
Kauffman gingerly turned back around and focused his attention on his console. He quickly scanned the graphs showing the results of the test. One of his monitors was showing an error in bright blinking red. “It looks like we did establish a drive field but I’ve lost communications with the external field monitor network.”
“Sir,” the crewman at the communications panel waited until the captain had looked in his direction then completed his report. “I’m getting reports from all over the ship of people feeling nauseous and dizzy.”
“Very well. Any reports of damage?”
“None yet sir.”
“All hands this is the captain,” Captain Shoemaker announced to the ship. “It appears as if we have all experienced some form of nausea or dizziness during the test. The good news is that nothing worse appears to have happened. All departments are to begin running diagnostics on all equipment in order to check for damage. Report any problems to the bridge immediately.”
Throughout the ship, those who were not cleaning up the floating messes went to work. Equipment which had been powered down to allow the test to proceed was powered back up and tested. The communications officer powered up the ship’s communications systems. After a few moments he turned toward the captain with a worried look on his face, “Sir, we’ve lost our lock on Earth. I can no longer pick up any of the normal beacons. I also can’t seem to establish a link to the external field monitors.”
The captain evaluated this for less than a second before issuing a string of orders. “Helm, power up the collision avoidance radar and perform a sweep. Report any contacts. Engineering, get the shield back up then launch the celestial navigator and let me know when it has a fix on our position. Coms, see if you can pick up any signals at all. Mr. Kauffman, what are the odds that your static drive field has caused us to shift position?”
As the bridge crew sprung into action Kauffman looked at his frozen readouts one more time before answering. “As far as I can determine captain, the drive fields were set to form a static non-propulsive drive field around the ship. It is theoretically possible though that we may have experienced some small amount of propulsive force due to our incomplete understanding of the interaction between the drive field and normal space.”
“Until I find out otherwise, I’m going on the assumption we have moved.”
“That seems like a prudent precaution sir. I’m going to try to run some analysis on the drive field readings to see if something pops up.”
“Thank you Mr. Kauffman. Please let me know if you find anything.”
The next report came from the helm. “Sir, C.A.R. sweep shows nothing in the area, not even the field monitor probes.”
“Very well. Mr. Simatowski, what is the status of the navigator?”
“Launched and active. It should have our position pegged in about three minutes.”
“Coms?”
“Picking up some very weak signals from one direction off the low gain antenna. I’m still bringing up the high-gain antenna. If I were to hazard a guess I would say we are a considerable distance from home and the signals I’m picking up are the background noise of Earth.”
A few minutes later Simatowski said, “The celestial navigator has a preliminary position report. Transferring the data to the helm.”
The helmsman spent a few moments working his console and then let out a low whistle.
“You have something to report Mr. Karston?”
“I’m sorry sir,” the Helm apologized. “The position report from the celestial navigator is accurate to within about 5,000 kilometers. Its first estimate puts us roughly 693 million kilometers from our original location. We have traveled
away from the sun and upwards from the solar plane at an angle of about thirty degrees.”
Captain Shoemaker chewed on his lower lip for a moment as he contemplated the new information. “Very well. As soon as you have a more accurate fix I need a return course direct to Earth plotted. Give us a bit of fuel margin at the end for maneuvering. Coms, record a short message giving our location and bearing. Set it to continuously transmit on our assigned AST frequency. As soon as you get a reply I want to be notified. Jay, can I have a word with you?”
Kauffman followed the captain through the bridge hatch and waited while Shoemaker closed it behind him. “I don’t think I have to tell you that we are in a bit of a bind. Because of our location, I really don’t think we will be able to make contact with Earth and I’m worried about how long it will take us to make the trip back given our fuel status. I need to know what happened and I need to know if there is any possibility of using your new drive to get us back.”
“Why do you think we will be unable to make contact with Earth? This ship is equipped with a very long range transceiver just for this eventuality.”
“It’s not the equipment,” the captain explained gently floating in front of Jay. “It’s where we are. We are off the ecliptic. High gain antennas are very directional and unless there happens to be one pointing in our general direction nobody will hear us. We are in an area of space where there are no ships or probes therefore nobody will have a high gain antenna pointed in this direction.”
“Oh,” Kauffman replied feeling a little foolish. “It’s going to take quite a bit of time just to determine why we are where we are. Until I understand that, I can’t make any promises about using the drive to take us back.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. You had best get to work. One more thing,” Shoemaker said just as Jay started to turn away. “How long was the drive in operation?”
“Fifteen seconds as planned. Why?”
“Do me a favor and calculate what our average velocity was as soon as you get back to your station; I would like to give the crew some good news if at all possible.”
“Yes sir.”
The pair returned to the bridge and about a minute later Jay floated over to the captain and handed him a small slip of paper. He glanced at the number written on it and smiled.
“Captain, I have a course back to Earth plotted.” The helm’s tone of voice indicated that the news was not going to be good.
Shoemaker’s smile faded as he replied, “Give me the details.”
“We have traveled 693,212,910 kilometers from our previous position. We are now 701,715,043 kilometers straight line distance from Earth. Expending nearly all of our fuel for acceleration and deceleration we can make it back to Earth in just under 72 days.”
“Very well. Dock the autonavigator and start the main engine prestart checklist.” The captain pressed a button on his console and addressed the crew. “Attention all hands, this is the captain! First and foremost I want to congratulate the entire crew and especially Mr. Jay Kauffman for a momentous achievement. According to Mr. Kauffman’s calculations we achieved a velocity of roughly 154 times the speed of light. The light-speed barrier has officially been broken!”
The captain paused in his address as the bridge crew broke out in applause and whoops of joy. He knew that similar expressions of emotion were occurring throughout the ship. After thirty seconds the captain continued, “May I have your attention one more time please. Although congratulations for breaking the light-speed barrier are warranted I must point out that this was not supposed to happen. Apparently, our understanding of the physics behind this new technology is still somewhat limited. We have traveled nearly 700 million kilometers and are now very far from home. Until we can learn why this happened we must rely on our normal propulsion system to get us back. The return trip will take over seventy days.
“This will not present a problem with our available power or water supplies but it will put a strain on our consumables such as air and food. I am therefore going to be implementing a rationing system for food. I’m also declaring an air emergency in order to conserve as much of our supply as possible. It will not be an enjoyable trip but we will make it home. All hands make preps for acceleration!”
Forty-five minutes later the Starfire’s main engine roared to life and the crew of the first ever starship began their long journey home.
* * * * *
Anita reclined in her comfortable office chair, feet up on her desk, arms crossed. She had canceled all appointments for the rest of the day and tomorrow. She was in no mood for company or for dealing with corporate matters. The pit of her stomach was knotted into a tight, compact ball and she could not concentrate on anything other than the fate of the Starfire.
“Mrs. Kingston?” a familiar voice quietly intruded.
“What is it CAIN?” she asked without inflection, thinking the machine was only going to give her some more bad news.
“I believe I may have found out what happened to the Starfire. If the calculations are correct they achieved faster than light speed in a direction that I may be able to compute based upon the available information.”
This was actually some good news! Her feet dropped to the floor, her arms uncrossed and she leaned over her desk with her chin cupped in her folded hands. “Give me the details please!” her voice becoming more animated.
“An analysis of the last 300 microseconds of data from the field probes indicates that the field became unbalanced. At first I could not determine why this might have occurred. I then decided to perform a complete review of the stardrive design and then run some detailed simulations of the drive’s response as it was powered up. The result was that I’ve uncovered a design flaw in the stardrive for which I accept full responsibility.”
“Nonsense,” Anita fired back before the machine could continue. “This technology is so advanced and so new that nobody, not even you, can take into consideration every tiny detail when the drive was blueprinted.”
“You are wrong Mrs. Kingston. I am a machine and as such I should be able to take into account even the smallest detail. I missed an important design factor in my haste to generate the drive’s blueprints. How this happened is currently unknown. I am running a complete set of diagnostics on my internal circuitry in an attempt to determine where the malfunction lies.”
“I won’t argue this point any longer CAIN. You may be a machine, but the intelligence that exists within you is certainly more than that of a mere machine. The very fact that you did make a mistake proves that very point. Now, tell me what it is you have learned before I dock you a week’s pay.”
Anita felt that if CAIN had been equipped with a face he would have smiled. “A week’s pay it is. Thank you Mrs. Kingston. Your words have given me much to think about. As for the design flaw, I discovered that the drive servos for the rotating components of the stardrive field generator are insufficiently sized to prevent them from slightly changing their speed as the drive field builds up. The feedback from the field causes a slight drag on the servo which changes its speed which in turn causes the output field to be altered. These changes could not be detected during the initial testing because the drive field was not drawing sufficient power.”
Anita’s brow furrowed as she digested what CAIN had just told her. “I thought the stardrive fields were not electromagnetic and therefore would not cause such an effect.”
“The drive field itself may not be electromagnetic but it has its origins in the complex interaction of the electromagnetic fields created within the drive. The good news is now that the problem is understood it can be corrected. The equations will have to be modified to account for this effect and a new drive will have to be designed to compensate for the change in spin speed.”
“You said that you might be able to determine where the Starfire is now. Can you?”
“Based upon the last known orientation of the ship and the imbalance that was recorded just prior to the Starfire’s disappea
rance, I have computed the most probable direction the ship took when it went FTL. I cannot, however, determine how fast the ship may have been traveling.”
“Thank you CAIN. That is perhaps the best news I’ve heard since they disappeared. Put the figures into an email and send it to me. I will forward the projected course to our space operations center and have them concentrate their search along that path.”
“Done.”
Anita turned to her computer and set to work.
13
Contact
===============================================
===== January 2049 (Terran calendar) =====
===============================================
“Captain to the bridge!” the ship-wide address system announced. The message was repeated. Captain Shoemaker heard the announcement and cursed softly. He had just undressed and was standing in the shower with his hand on the knob that would release a soothing stream of fresh water. Despite their predicament, the supply of water available to the crew was essentially unlimited since it was recycled. For a brief moment, Shoemaker considered ignoring the announcement long enough to finish his much needed shower but decided that doing so would not have been proper for the commanding officer of Earth’s first starship.
Letting out a sigh of frustration he exited the shower and padded over to the communications panel. He punched a button and said, “Bridge, this is the Captain. What’s going on?”
The voice of the chief engineer replied, “Sir, we have received a reply from AST. One message is addressed to the entire crew and the other is addressed to Mr. Kauffman and yourself. Both have been decompressed and are ready for playback.”
It had been nearly three days since the test had hurled them at faster than light speed to a distance of over 700 million kilometers from home. “Very well. Make the first message available to the entire crew and send both to me. Make sure Mr. Kauffman gets his message as well. I’ll listen to them in my quarters.”